6 Minute English / Are we getting more allergic to things?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello and welcome to 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Beth.

And I'm Neil. In this episode, we're talking about allergies. Allergies are when a certain food or material makes you feel sick. Do you have any allergies, Beth?

Yeah, so I am actually allergic to dairy so I can't have anything with milk. So, no cheese, no butter. What about you, Neil? Have you got any allergies?

Well, I'm not great with dairy either, but it's not an allergy more of an intolerance. So, it just makes me feel a bit bad rather than actually making me sick. But I do have hay fever, so I'm allergic to pollen. That means in the summer months I'm sneezing and coughing all the time. I get runny eyes and a runny nose, and it also gives me a little bit of asthma, so it's a bit of a pain.

Oh yeah, that sounds really horrible. Now, scientific evidence shows that more people are developing allergies. In this programme we're going to find out about what it's like living with an allergy and where in the world has the highest rate of allergies.

But first, I have a question for you, Beth. What is the most common allergy in the world? Is it:

a) Peanuts?b) Pollen? Orc) Dairy?

I'm going to say pollen. A lot of people I know have hay fever.

Including me. Well, we'll find out the answer at the end of the show. Now, Beth, you're allergic to dairy, but imagine if you had over 50 allergies. That's the situation for Mia Silverman, who runs a social media account, Allergies with Mia, where she talks about living with lots of allergies.